On 21 June 2012 Stephen Miller gave evidence to the House of Commons Public Bill Committee considering the provisions of the Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Bill.
One of the suggestions in the Bill is that employers be entitled to conduct protected conversations with employees with a view to agreeing a Compromise Agreement exit. In unfair dismissal claims Tribunals would be prohibited from hearing evidence about the content of such conversations unless the conversation was deemed "improper".
Although such a protection has an obvious appeal for employers, it is difficult to see how the situation could be made to work in practice.
Stephen illustrated that with an example when he was taking opposition questions:
"Stephen Miller: Listening to the debate, if one feature has to be considered, it is that you must exclude misconduct cases. So far, as I say, redundancy or changed business needs are no fault, but misconduct cases can involve, for example, what happened the night before at the office party, when there has been an indiscretion. If there is a conversation about that - "We want you to leave" - it is very difficult to see how, if the employee refuses to leave, there can be a fair disciplinary process, when the employer has already taken the position that the employee has to go. At the moment, my anticipation is that judges will take a lot of persuasion to exclude evidence about that, and therefore, they will use the elasticity around the word "improper", saying, "It was improper to do that, therefore we can hear evidence about it."
Q 223 Ian Murray: I will not ask you to give us practical examples of office party indiscretions.
Stephen Miller: You can use your imagination."
Follow the link to read the full transcript or view the video of the interview.
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